Appearances
Rock makes his first appearance in Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory, in which is revealed how he becomes friends with Terry Bogard. After Terry kills Geese, he adopts Rock, whom he takes care of like his son. Rock becomes a playable character in Garou: Mark of the Wolves, having lived with Terry for ten years. During this time, a new King of Fighters tournament arose under the name "Maximum Mayhem", which Rock and Terry both decide to compete in. By the end of the tournament, Rock finds his final opponent is Kain R. Heinlein, who reveals himself to be both the host and Rock's uncle. Kain, aware that Geese Howard's will held presumably valuable secrets but unable to discover them without assistance, wins Rock's aid in working through the document by offering information regarding Rock's mother—whom Kain claimed was still alive. Terry accepts Rock's decision to become Kain's new partner, with Rock promising to return. In his development blog for KOF: Maximum Impact 2, Ureshino states that he doesn't know about Rock's mother or the true inheritor of Geese's legacy but hints that it would most likely conflict with Terry.
Despite making several cameos in games from The King of Fighters series, Rock is only playable in the spin-off games KOF: Maximum Impact and Maximum Impact 2. Both games feature Rock entering into King of Fighters tournaments developed in Southtown prior to the start of Maximum Mayhem. Rock also appears as a playable character in the crossover video games NeoGeo Battle Coliseum and Capcom vs. SNK 2.
Rock also appears in the 2006 original net animation The King of Fighters: Another Day. In the second episode Rock finds Lien Neville fighting Billy Kane, Geese's former right-hand man, in the Geese Tower. As Lien is about to be killed, Rock saves her, which enrages Billy as he cannot believe that he is Geese's son. As Billy attacks Rock, Lien shoots a laser that takes Billy out of the tower. Memories of Stray Wolves, a twenty-minute featurette serves as a retrospective of the Fatal Fury series, with Terry narrating the events of the games to Rock. The first seven volumes from the manhua The King of Fighters 2003 by Wing Yen features a short chapter from Garou: Mark of the Wolves based on Rock's training with Terry. In the last of the chapters, Rock fights Grant, who is revealed to be a childhood friend who always protected him. Despite feeling sad for fighting his friend, Rock defeats Grant in order to meet the host of the Maximum Mayhem tournament, his uncle, Kain.
Read more about this topic: Rock Howard
Famous quotes containing the word appearances:
“Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“What I often forget about students, especially undergraduates, is that surface appearances are misleading. Most of them are at base as conventional as Presbyterian deacons.”
—Muriel Beadle (b. 1915)
“It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)